Broken
by The Freak Queen
Summary: Sure, she's the crazy one, but who's more broken: the girl who misses her brother... or the man who can no longer care? Rated T because I used the f-bomb but only once I think. Set during the day-off in 358/2 Days. I have no clue where Axel went, and it's been so long since I've played that I really don't remember, and I can't find any site that will tell me where. So this.


Broken

**Author's Note: Don't be alarmed, but I'm now in the Kingdom Hearts section of this site. Slowly taking over... kidding. So... Axel is great. I love assassins, red hair, flying weapons, fire, and boys with attitude, so it naturally happens that I love both him and Lea. Therefor, I have written a fic about Axel. It assumes he had a sister when he was Lea, which I don't believe is even remotely correct, so I'll call it slightly AU. I hope you enjoy it, but I won't force you to, because I can't and that would be weird anyway. Please review, I could use the feedback- I've been running rampant without any guidance for months now, so my writing style and flow have probably gone to sh*t. With your help, I can suck less. :-)**

_She looks so peaceful._

I stare at the young woman on the bed. She is sleeping, in a way, her body pumped full of drugs to keep her from waking up. Her hair is red, like mine, but it's short and smooth instead of long and spiked. Her face is the same sort of shape as well, but more feminine, and grown up now, with none of the freckles it used to have. She looks like one of those angels painted onto church windows- an angel who's been forgotten by everyone and everything. The peace on her face is completely at odds with the chaos of everything else in this fucked up world.

But her peacefulness doesn't last- it never does.

She starts to mumble, frowning, and her limbs begin to shake and flail. I tense, readying myself for the possibility of convulsions; nobody pays to attention to her, so when she takes her meds, she sometimes mixes them up. It isn't life threatening- at least I don't think it is- but she should really be in a hospital, where someone can give her the attention she needs. Not that it matters; she was in a hospital before, and no one paid attention to her there either, so they discharged her. It's like she's one of us- no one sees her, no one pays attention.

No one but me.

Suddenly, she sits bolt upright, gasping for air as though she had been drowning only moments before. For all I know, she could have been; from some of what I've heard and seen, her dreams can be a little… disturbing. She looks around before swinging her legs over the side of the bed, elbows on knees, head in hands, breaths shaky and slow.

I just stand in front of her, waiting. For a long time she doesn't move- I almost wonder if maybe she hasn't gone back to sleep like that. It wouldn't be the first time.

She hasn't.

She looks up at me and gasps.

"Lea! You came back! I knew you wouldn't miss my birthday, I knew it, Mom was wrong she had no idea what she was…" she trails off. She can see it now, the differences, things that people who are stable, sane, and not pumped full of drugs that force them to sleep through horrible nightmares, seeing what even _normal_ people miss. She was always sharp, sometimes knowing things about me before I even knew them. Just looking at me, she can tell- Lea had green eyes while mine are closer to aqua, and Lea didn't _have _ upside down teardrop markings under his eyes. Not that he wore long black coats with matching boots and gloves either.

The confusion and hurt are displayed openly on her face. Memory tells me that she's been like this since she was small, and that I should do something to help that expression go away. Funny story- I don't know how anymore. That's what happens when you lose your heart.

"I'm sorry."

"Are you real?"

The question doesn't surprise me anymore. I'm not sure if it ever did; after all, I wonder that sometimes myself. I consider how I want to answer her this time- I keep hoping that one of these days, one of these times, she'll remember what I've told her. I keep thinking that maybe she'll remember me at my next visit. If she could remember me, she could remember to take her pills, and she wouldn't seem so broken. Then I wouldn't have to waste my time with this anymore. If she could just remember…

But she never does.

"It depends."

She chuckles softly at my statement, but there isn't any happiness or excitement in the sound. It's hollow, like hearing the difference between your own voice and an echo, and she sounds sarcastic. She watches me closely, guardedly, making sure that I don't come any closer or move any further away. I don't move at all, not wanting to spook her, waiting for her to switch gears and change the topic. But she doesn't, and this _does_ surprise me, because I have never managed to hold her attention for this long before.

"It depends," I continue slowly, "on what you mean by 'real.' I'm not supposed to exist, but I'm standing here in front of you."

I pause for a moment to let that sink in. "Is that good enough?"

"So… you're not real- but you're more real than the others who visit me. And you're not Lea, but you are, except that you aren't." She stops, nodding to herself. A frown darkens her features again, and there's a new question.

"Do you know who I am then?"

She looks so young, so innocent, but at the same time she's like an old woman; she's seen too much and it's made her tired of life. It should make me sad, or angry, it should make me feel _something,_ but I can't. I can't feel anything. I am an assassin, the Flurry of Dancing Flames. I am Axel.

Not Lea.

"Sure I know who you are. Your name's Hunter," I reply using the voice I always did when she was small.

"Right. I'm Hunter. Hunter… and my brother left me."

She seems like she's considering that. I can almost see the idea turning around in her head, flipping and rotating and sliding. She smiles a little, then giggles. Then she stops, like her thoughts had just rushed together into one terrible realization.

"You look an awful lot like him. You sound like him. You talk like him. You stand like him and walk like him. Do you know where my brother is?"

No. I don't. Lea is wherever his heart is, because I'm not him. I'm nobody- or more specifically, I'm _his_ Nobody. But I can't tell her that- she seems to be coherent, and who knows what she might remember. It's too complicated and dangerous, and it might freak her out.

"Yeah. Sure."

She nods silently, and tears suddenly well up in her eyes. Her body rocks and her chest heaves like she's sobbing, but no sound comes out. She lays back onto her bed, curls into the fetal position, and continues silently sobbing. I've only seen her like this once before, when I- Lea- disappeared for a few days after her mother went crazy. Melissa freaked out after Lea had brought some girl home and caught them kissing on the couch. He left for a while- when he came back, he snuck in through Hunter's window. That's how I found her- she was curled up on the bed, tears flowing freely, body wracking with soundless sobs. I felt terrible, sat with her until she stopped crying, then slept the rest of the night on her floor…

Not me. _Lea._ Lea sat with her that night. _Lea _slept on her floor. And Lea's heart would break, seeing her like that again, because of him, just like last time.

But I don't have one, so I just wait for her to stop crying. She's held her focus for twenty minutes- she can't hold it much longer.

It won't be long now…

"Oh!" she suddenly gasps. She holds her hands, shining and wet from her tears, in front of her like they're foreign. Her cheeks glisten as well, and her shirt has tearstains on it.

"Was I- was I crying? I don't remember…"

She looks around the room, lost, until her eyes refocus on me. She cocks her head to one side, shakes it a little, and asks: "I- I'm sorry to bother you, but… do you know why I was crying?"

It's not fair. Really it isn't. All doped up, no one to help her, kicked out of the house by her own mother for missing her only brother. She has nowhere to go, nowhere to be, nothing left to hold on to. It's almost… like…

… me.

"I made you cry. I'm very sorry," I say. Again, with the false sorrys; all I do is lie to her, because I know it's supposed to hurt. So for her sake, I pretend it does. Just a little.

"It's okay. I forgive you. Everything will be… alright…" she yawns, stretches, and rolls back onto her side. The drugs are kicking in again, and within a few minutes, she's sleeping.

So I leave.

I don't put her back under the blanket, or put the pillow under her head, or make sure the right pills are out for her tomorrow, because that's what Lea would do, and he isn't here, isn't coming back, and because _I don't care_. I can't care. I'm a Nobody.

It does occur to me, though, as I create the dark portal to go back to the Castle That Never Was, that maybe I was wrong: maybe Hunter _isn't_ the one who's broken. After all, people are supposed to feel things; Roxas has taught me that, with the way he seems to actually feel emotions rather than remember them. So, who's more broken then? The poor girl back there who is still utterly devastated over the disappearance of her only friend and idol years ago?

Or me, who can no longer bring myself to actually care?


End file.
